Kabul: At least 25 people have been killed and 42 wounded after a Taliban car bomb struck a bus carrying government employees in western Kabul on Monday, officials said, in the latest attack to strike the Afghan capital.

Following years of civil unrest, the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM) was opened in 2010 to offer kids of all social backgrounds an opportunity to learn music. Today, the Zohra Orchestra at the ANIM is the first all-female group of its kind to launch in Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is a mountainous landlocked country and all imports and exports depend on neighbouring countries. Even before relations between Kabul and Islamabad became strained over accusations of harbouring militants, Pakistan has stymied Afghanistan’s efforts to trade with India.

During the Taliban rule, like all other working women in Afghanistan, Suraya Raisada had to quit her job. “I began giving tuitions to schoolchildren at home,” said Ms. Raisada in broken Urdu, a reporter with a leading daily in Afghanistan who began working in the early 1990s during the mujahideen period.

The massive truck bomb attack in Kabul on Wednesday that killed at least 90 people and injured 365, has also damaged several embassies in the city’s highly-fortified diplomatic quarter. Indian Embassy staffs are safe after the massive Kabul blast, tweets Sushma Swaraj, India’ External Affairs Minister.

Kabul has threatened to shut the Afghan transit route for Pakistani exports to Central Asia if Islamabad does not allow Afghan traders to use Lahore’s Wagah border for trade with India. “If Pakistan does not allow Afghan traders to use the Wagah border for imports and exports of their goods, Afghanistan will also not allow Pakistan to use Afghan transit routes to reach Central Asia and other countries for exports,” President Ashraf Ghani said in a meeting with UK’s special envoy for Afghanistan and Pakistan Owen Jenkins in Kabul.

Kidnapped aid worker back home safe from AfghanistanKidnapped aid worker back home safe from AfghanistanSushma Swaraj tweets end of 43-day ordeal of Judith D’Souza. Judith D’Souza, the Indian aid worker who was kidnapped in Kabul last month, was rescued from her captors on Friday. She reached New Delhi on Saturday evening.

With a hint of swagger, Afghanistan's first female pilot since the fall of the Taliban is defying death threats and archaic gender norms to infiltrate what is almost entirely a male preserve. Dressed in khaki overalls, aviator shades and a black headscarf, 23-year-old Niloofar Rahmani cuts a striking presence as she struts across the tarmac at the Kabul Air Force base, which is otherwise devoid of women as reported the Dawn.

n Afghan woman who was beaten to death and set on fire by a mob for allegedly burning a copy of the Koran was innocent, the interior minister said Monday. The woman named Farkhunda was lynched on Thursday by an angry crowd in central Kabul for allegedly burning a copy of the Islamic holy boo

Finance Minister Ishaq Dar described it a major step towards closer partnership between the two countries with transmission of Central Asian energy to Pakistan. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim and US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Dan Feldman witnessed the signing ceremony at the World Bank Headquarters. “It’s a win-win for both countries,” Dar said, as Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif’s government successfully concluded the negotiations with Afghanistan on an accord on 1.25 cent per kW transit fee for supply of Central Asian electricity to Pakistan through Afghan territory.

Afghanistan inaugurated its first new president in a decade on Monday, swearing in technocrat Ashraf Ghani to head a power-sharing government just as the withdrawal of most foreign troops presents a crucial test. The first democratic handover of power in Afghan history has been far from smooth: the deal for a unity government was cobbled together after months of deadlock over a vote in which both Ghani and opponent Abdullah Abdullah claimed victory.

Rival Afghan presidential candidates – Ahsraf Ghani and Abdullah Abdullah - signed ‘unity government’ deal on Sunday. Under the power-sharing deal, Ghani will take over as President of Afghanistan while Abdullah will nominate ‘chief executive’, thereby ending a prolonged stand-off over disputed election results at a pivotal moment in the war-weary nation’s history.